The present disclosure generally relates to the field of communicating data over a network, and more particularly to the field of routing and controlling retransmission of data packets through portions of a network.
Various data communications protocols are used to send data over a network between two data processors. In some examples, networks are able to send that data by using multiple communications paths, sometimes splitting portions of a data transmission across the multiple paths. Some protocols implement data communications where a receiving processor sends acknowledgements indicating successful receipt to the sender of those data packets. Networks are able to include intermediate nodes, such as performance enhancing proxies (PEP), that are able to store data packets and perform retransmission in the case of missing acknowledgements. Transmission of data and associated acknowledgements over multiple paths affects the operation of intermediate nodes that are located in only one path or in a position of the network that does not include all paths used to send a particular data set.